Director- Product Owner, Billing / Agile Product Lead - Manchester

As one of the world’s top three credit rating agencies, Fitch Ratings plays a critical role in global capital markets by providing credit analysis, ratings, research, and commentary to financial market participants. For more than 100 years, Fitch Ratings has created value for global markets through rigorous analysis and deep expertise, resulting in market-leading tools, methodologies, indices, research, and analytical products.

Fitch Ratings is part of Fitch Group, a global leader in financial information services with operations in more than 30 countries. Fitch Group also includes Fitch Solutions and is jointly headquartered in London and New York. Fitch Group is owned by Hearst.

Explore a career at Fitch Ratings and join a collaborative network of curious minds. Here, our differences are our strengths—in life as well as at work. Together, we work with integrity and objectivity to bring clarity to the world’s financial markets. We harness the ideas, expertise, and professionalism of our global workforce, which are integral to our continued success. The accessibility and depth of experience of our industry-leading analysts, combined with our broad sector expertise, help market participants make important credit decisions with confidence.

Fitch Ratings is currently seeking a Director, Product Owner – Billing / Agile Product Lead based in our Manchester office.

About the Team

Ratings Workflow Solutions (RWS), part of the Ratings COO organisation, is a cross-functional Agile team responsible for designing, implementing, and optimising applications and workflows used by our Ratings staff. Our goal is to streamline processes, mitigate risk, and advance standardisation and automation across Fitch’s ratings platforms and workflows.

The team partners closely with analytical, business, and technology colleagues to ensure our systems support the needs of the Ratings organisation and enable staff to work effectively.

How You’ll Make an Impact

We are looking for an experienced and dynamic Product Owner to lead an Agile delivery team responsible for optimising, streamlining, and automating Fitch’s billing processes and the applications that support them. This includes identifying opportunities for AI to transform how we work.

In this role, you will lead the squad, work closely with cross-functional stakeholders to understand their needs, solve problems, and ensure that we are building solutions that advance business objectives. You will partner with finance, business, risk and compliance, and technology teams to align priorities and deliver key outcomes.

Strong leadership, communication, and organisational skills are essential, as is the ability to work effectively with colleagues who have varying levels of Agile experience. A collaborative, customer-first mindset is critical.

- Establish and deliver a clear product vision and strategy for billing workflow applications, based on organisational needs. Translate this vision into a roadmap that optimises and streamlines billing processes while aligning stakeholders and the squad.

- Own the product backlog, feature prioritisation, roadmap, and minimum viable product (MVP) in support of business objectives.

- Communicate and align with stakeholders to prioritise features and ensure a shared understanding of sprint goals and backlog priorities.

- Lead the Agile squad in defining and aligning sprint goals, ensuring user stories are ready for delivery and supporting the squad in meeting sprint commitments.

- Support the squad in identifying dependencies, delivery risks, and other execution challenges.

- Work closely with the squad to provide timely feedback and answers to questions, and ultimately accept or reject sprint product increments.

- Oversee the squad’s quarterly delivery, ensuring it meets its objectives and delivers measurable business value.

- Lead product discovery, engaging users, testing assumptions, and validating opportunities, to identify the highest-value improvements for the Ratings business.

- Enhance and automate billing processes to improve data quality, standardise workflows, and integrate key systems.

- Identify and deliver AI-enabled solutions, including generative and agentic AI, to reduce manual effort, improve billing accuracy, and enhance the user experience.

- Analyse and break down complex workflows and system processes across current-state (“as-is”) and future-state (“to-be”) environments to support billing automation and standardisation.

- Oversee and guide user training, rollout, and change-management activities.

You May Be a Good Fit If You Have

- A bachelor’s degree and at least five years of product ownership experience.

- Strong Agile practitioner capabilities and experience working with Agile teams.

- A proven track record of delivering workflow and data-driven solutions with a customer-first mindset.

- The ability to view the business as a customer and translate requirements into effective technical solutions.

- Experience establishing a product vision and translating it into a roadmap and backlog, prioritised by business value and technical feasibility.

- Strong product discovery and data skills, including mapping current- and future-state processes, defining KPIs, and using data to drive prioritisation.

- Strong interpersonal and organisational skills, with the ability to work effectively across teams and stakeholder groups.

- Hands-on experience with Agile delivery and tools such as Jira, Confluence, AI-assisted prototyping and productivity tools, and Microsoft Visio.

What Would Make You Stand Out

- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) certification.

- Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to engage and influence stakeholders at all levels.

- Demonstrated ability to oversee complex projects and succeed in a high-demand, matrixed organisation.

- Previous experience in debt capital markets, financial services, or consulting.

- Experience with billing, finance, credit ratings, or Salesforce projects.

- Experience applying AI, including generative AI, to automate business processes or enhance product delivery.

- Flexibility to work across time zones and collaborate with global stakeholders.

Why Choose Fitch?

- Hybrid Work Environment: Three days per week in the office, depending on your line of business and location.

- A Culture of Learning and Mobility: Dedicated training, leadership development, and mentorship programmes designed to make your time at Fitch a continuous learning opportunity.

- Investing in Your Future: Retirement planning and tuition reimbursement programmes that support your short- and long-term goals.

- Promoting Health and Wellbeing: Comprehensive healthcare offerings that support physical, mental, financial, social, and occupational wellbeing.

- Supportive Parenting Policies: Family-friendly policies, including a generous global parental leave plan, designed to help you balance career and family life.

- Inclusive Work Environment: A collaborative workplace where all voices are valued, supported by Employee Resource Groups that connect and empower colleagues around the world.

- Dedication to Giving Back: Paid volunteer days, matched funding for donations, and opportunities to volunteer in your community.

At Fitch, AI is embedded in how we work every day—supporting smarter decision-making, streamlining workflows, and enabling new ways to create value for our business and clients. Intelligent solutions are increasingly part of our day-to-day operations, helping teams work more efficiently and think differently as we continue to evolve.

We are looking for colleagues who are comfortable operating in an AI-enabled environment, or who are curious, adaptable, and eager to build their AI literacy over time. We value professionals who embrace technology as part of continuous learning and are committed to using it thoughtfully to enhance how work gets done.

Fitch is committed to providing global securities markets with objective, timely, independent, and forward-looking credit opinions. To protect Fitch’s credibility and reputation, employees must take every precaution to avoid conflicts of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest.

If you are successful in the recruitment process at Fitch Ratings, you will be asked to declare any securities holdings and other potential conflicts before commencing employment. If you or your immediate family have holdings that may conflict with your work responsibilities, you may be asked to divest them before your start date.

Fitch is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, colour, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by law.

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